organizing

Photo by Tawny 13

You all have asked some amazing questions.  Truly.  It’s given me some great writing fodder - I’ve collated and stored every single query, so I’ll sprinkle some of my answers throughout future content this fall here on Simple Mom.

First up - reader Vintage Mommy asks, “I am really struggling to organize my daughter’s toys and art/craft supplies in a way that will make it easier to clean up. She is both a packrat and very untidy and I’m starting to go nuts.  Tips?”

Great question.  I organize our art supplies and our toys differently, so I’ll tackle one at a time.  Today, I’ll do art supplies.

In her book The Creative Family, Amanda Soule suggests designating a separate, unique space in the home for art supplies.  This can be a place that the whole family can use, especially since she recommends quality art supplies for both kids and adults.  In other words, there’s no need to separate kids’ craft supplies from the grown-ups’ - put them all together for everyone to use.

I’ve taken some of her advice and done the same.  Several of us in our family have a right-brained creative bent, so a well-organized space further fuels our drive to create.  It really helps to have easily-accessible arts and crafts tools.

There are no built-in closets in this country (as is the case in most non-Western countries), so most people use freestanding wardrobes to store their clothing.  Our landlord left an extra wardrobe in our apartment when we moved in, so we eventually transformed it into our art station in the playroom.

In all honesty, it’s nothing original - it’s simply a place to neatly store those art supplies that can easily get unruly.  And almost everything is recycled.  Our main storage baskets are orange fruit crates donated from a farmer at our local market (all we had to do was ask).

Glass jars store scissors, chalk, beads, and the like - I used leftover scrapbook paper for their labels.  Plastic food containers are repurposed to hold crayons, colored pencils, and markers.  Small sour cream and yogurt containers house smaller items like rubber bands, googely eyes, and stickers.

Supplies like craft sticks, balloons, felt boards, and paper dolls are stored neatly in basic resealable plastic bags.

We bought small, inexpensive shelves from a friend and simply set them in the wardrobe.  Our 3-year-old daughter is allowed access to the bottom shelf at any time; she must ask an adult for permission to use the supplies on the middle shelf; and she can only use the supplies on the top shelf (such as paint) with supervision.

And it worked out beautifully that our shoe holder we weren’t using fit perfectly next to the shelves.  This is where we store crayons, colored pencils, and easel paper.

I used small tea spoons to hang craft aprons on the door - it didn’t take much to bend them into shape so that they hug the top of the door.

The thing I like best about our art cabinet is that once the doors are shut, it looks like a clean, streamlined wardrobe - clutter-free art storage in the playroom.

If your family loves arts and crafts, encourage that hobby and make the supplies easy to access.  You won’t use them as much if you have to dig them out of storage, and it’ll be messier because all the supplies will be out and about at once.  When you have instant access, you only need to take out what you need.

Head to thrift shops, garage sales, or craigslist to see if a piece of furniture works for you.  I definitely recommend something with doors, so that your home is clutter-free when the doors are shut.  Your storage system doesn’t need to be relegated to a kiddie area, either - in fact, Amanda’s art closet is in their dining room.

And you don’t have to spend much money on canisters for your supplies.  Think outside the box (literally) for your meta-stuff - repurposing containers is cheaper, greener, and more creative.

Does this spark some ideas for you, Vintage?  How about anyone else - how do you store art supplies? I’d love to hear what works for you.

Photo by Jeremy Hall

Reader Vicki asks:

“I am truly flabergasted at what to do with ALL the photos and videos of our little guy, especially since we are hoping to have more children in the future. I love to scrapbook, but now have very little room or time for it. How do you organize your photos, what do you do with them all?”

A good question, Vicki, because even though the digital world makes photo storage so much easier, it can still cause clutter build-up.  In fact, digital photography can cause both physical clutter and mental clutter - it’s so easy to take hundreds of photos in one sitting, but then you have to decide among them all which are the best for printing.

I tried to scrapbook because I love so many of the supplies, and it quenched some of my creative thirst.  But I discovered two problems for me - one, the cost of supplies really added up; and two, I just didn’t have the time to do it well. Being a recovering perfectionist, if I can’t do something well, I’d rather not do it at all.

We, too, have tons of photos of our kids - I suppose that’s a universal issue for modern-day parents.  And it’s challenging to whittle down to the absolute best ones (who wants to delete their kids?).  But like home decluttering, it’s cathartic to delete all but the best - I promise, you won’t miss the blurry ones, and you’ll better appreciate the ones you do keep.

Here’s our family’s basic system:

• As we download photos from our camera to the computer, we store them in files labeled by the month and year.

• I sort through them and delete the unusable ones.  This is often where my husband and I part ways - he’s more inclined to keep more than I’d like.  But since it’s not a major issue for me, I default to him, and leave a photo if in doubt.

• I upload a sampling of the best photos to our family’s Flickr account.  When I have time, I edit them in Photoshop first.

• At the end of the month, we burn the month’s photos from the computer’s file on a CD, label it by the month and year, and store it in an ongoing CD book.  If the entire month’s worth of photos won’t fit on one CD, we use a DVD.

• From time to time I print a photo for framing.  We now have a good printer  at home, but when we lived in the States, we sent the files to Costco or CVS via the internet.  If I found a “free shipping” coupon online, I’d have them sent to us.  (Another benefit to that is that you can send additional copies to other addresses, always a crowd pleaser with the grandparents.)

Photo Books

We didn’t want to take any original photos overseas with us, so before we moved, we made a few photo books.  These are bound books made by services that publish your photos in a high-quality, coffee table book-like format.

You could easily make these chronologically by date, but we had four made by themes - our wedding photos and our daughter’s first year were two of them.  We’ll make another one for our son’s first year, and then after that, we’ll most likely make annual family photo books.

I used PhotoWorks, which allows you to easily design your books online.  Plus, it’s easy to find coupon codes from them around the internet (head here for free shipping, in fact).  I’m happy with the way our books printed, but there are plenty of photo book services online.

So, Vicki, that’s what I do - nothing revolutionary.  A basic five-step process:

1. download photos from the camera to the computer
2. upload some of the good ones to Flickr
3. burn all the photos each month to a CD or DVD
4. occasionally print one for framing
5. make a photo book annually

There are other options as well - digital scrapbooking has really taken off, and it can really fuel your creative juices without taking up as much room for supplies as the traditional method.  But while it’s easy to find free supplies online, the cost can add up.

For more photo inspiration, Rachel at Small Notebook wrote about her organizing system awhile back, and Heidi from Mt. Hope Chronicles also wrote a good 101 article for novice photographers.  Digital Photography School is also an excellent blog with more photography tips than you possibly have time for.

Please chime in, readers - how do you organize and store your photos?  Know of a great resource we should all know about? I’m looking forward to learning more good ideas.